


how quickly we forget the sting, my love

by crookedspoon



Series: The Sound by Which I Live and Die [22]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Community: 1-million-words, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fear Play, Multiple Personalities, Porn Battle Amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-14 00:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3401267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, it was difficult to reconcile his baser urges with his scientific curiosity. She allowed him the freedom to satisfy both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how quickly we forget the sting, my love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Prime Time Desserts](http://npt-admin.livejournal.com/41370.html), prompt "Porn," and [Porn Battle Golden Oldies](http://pbam.dreamwidth.org/2240.html), prompt "Harley Quinn/Jonathan Crane, mad science, ~~femdom~~ , intrigue, pinned" from Porn Battle VIII, although not all of it made it in here. **If these were your prompts** , feel free to drop me a note, and I'll gift this to you. 
> 
> Also fills "you may feel a small prick" from 1mw's [Feburary Bingo](http://1-million-words.livejournal.com/1061197.html).

"Johnny, please," Harleen whined, a pitiful plea that reflected off the cellar's bare stone walls. "You don't have to do this."

She was beautiful like this: trembling and terrified, hair coming undone, cherry lips as glossy as her widened eyes. Her blouse, a shade darker than her mouth but equally as sensual, was unbuttoned and slipping off one shoulder, revealing to him the wonders of her heaving chest and twitching abdominal muscles. 

"Sorry, Harleen, but I do. After what you did."

His voice was soft but firm. He placed his palm on her knee, running it over the smooth fabric of her stocking. She shuddered and recoiled from his touch, though not far. The straps binding her creaked. He decided not to stimulate her any further. This time, he wanted her undiluted reaction. 

"This would hurt less if you could only relax. I am not trying to cause you unnecessary harm."

She made a sound that might have been intended as a derisive huff, but came out strangled instead. Her eyes flickered from his face to the bright, buzzing table lamp beside him, restless like a butterfly, trying not to linger anywhere below his shoulders. She bit her lip and shifted against her restraints once more, brows knitting in trepidation. Unshed tears quivered on her eyelashes. They shone like quicksilver behind her fake glasses.

"Please just let me go," she whimpered so softly he barely made it out. He breathed deep. He would have absorbed the sound if he could, consumed every aspect of her fear, and stored it for later examination. It was exquisite. 

"Shh," he soothed, voice somewhat more strained than usual. Vague amusement stirred in the back of his mind. He pushed it down.

"Johnny!" she gasped, rolling her head from side to side. "Please, I can't. Pull it out again!"

Upon looking down, he found the needle he'd prepared already embedded in her arm. He must have injected it when he was distracted by her contorting features. His control was slipping. He needed to focus. 

Pulling back the plunger, he was satisfied when no blood came with the aspiration, and emptied the tube into her muscle. Harleen's drawn-out whine returned him to equilibrium. He placed the syringe next to the roll of gauze on the stainless steel tray beside him and picked up a band-aid to apply to the injection site. He left his gloves on for now. 

Harleen continued sniffling and her seat creaked under her tremors. He listened and observed, and in that moment he thought he must have been experiencing something akin to fondness. It fascinated him what a tiny needle could reduce a person to. Her stuttering breaths filled him with a serene calm, and he thought it would be safe to cut her loose now. He was back in control.

He unbuckled the straps on her left wrist, but before he could move to her ankle, she had grabbed a fistful of his hair. Her own was disheveled, sticking out in tufts, and her running mascara had replicated a version of the greasepaint designs she wore with her costume. Yet what made her so alluring was none of this, not the defiant gleam in her eyes. It was the residual fear behind it. 

Following her lead, he mashed their lips together then, disregarding the chemical taste of her lip gloss. He nipped and sucked and bit them, startling gasps out of her that turned into full-throated moans while she arched against him and tried pulling him closer by his loosening tie. He grasped the sides of face as much for balance as to maintain a respectable distance, which, to be fair, had become rather futile at this point.

He pulled away, chuckling under his breath, and rested his forehead against hers. His lenses were fogged. He waited for them to clear, while his thumbs skidded over the moist tracks on her cheeks.

"You're a marvel, Harleen," he said and kissed her again, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I can never figure out whether you're actually afraid of this, or just a really good actress."

"What a mean thing to say," Harleen protested, undoing the restraints on her other wrist. "After everything you put me through."

"Perhaps this will teach you to get your shots on time in the future."

"Ugh, no way. I'd much rather die horribly from a rusty nail." She shuddered, working the circulation back into her fingers. Then, not so discreetly eyeing the bulge in his pants, she grinned. "Besides, how are we gonna get you off if you have no reason to prick me with pointy objects?"

Tension was settling beneath his shoulders. He cleared his throat and straightened his tie. "I have a few compounds I haven't tested yet."

"Gratuitous horror trips, how fun." Her grin stretched wider. She laced their fingers together and placed them to her breast. It was pounding. "Feel this? I'm already trembling with excitement."

He didn't correct her that her trembling might rather be ongoing, not starting again. It was mere semantics. The real issue here was that she recovered too fast. He might need to create a compound that, instead of overstimulating the amygdala, inhibits the breakdown of such neurotransmitters as adrenaline and norepinephrine, thus drawing out the experience. _Thank you for that insight, Harleen._ He leaned in and kissed her neck, felt it throb against his lips, and suppressed the urge to bite. She moaned anyway, knowing what was on his mind. 

Her hand tightened on his, squeezing her breast. Harleen had never been subtle about her arousal, or about what she wanted from him in return for allowing him to dissect her fears. He shrugged away his discomfort.

"Now be a good boy and uncuff my legs," she murmured, guiding his latex-covered palm over the swell of her breast and down her sides. He watched as his hand skidded over the curve of her hips and down the length of her skirt. She slid his fingers under the hem, rolling up the fabric until they reached the bandage he had dressed her wound with. She had pulled her stocking over it again despite the tear. 

Her hand rested lightly on his, yet he found himself unable to move it away on his own. With his free hand, he folded up his glasses and put them on the tray. Then he leaned over to undo the straps, but only on one ankle. 

"You should keep this leg still for a moment longer."

She rolled her eyes but nudged his hand up her thigh again. He let her. "If you care so much about my leg, why don't you just take my mind off of it, _doctor_?"

Harleen stretched herself and ran the instep of her other foot up his suit jacket. The toebox of her shoe was cool against his cheek. He felt gentle pressure on his shoulder directing him to his knees. He followed.

"Make me forget, Johnny. Make me forget you've ever been mean to me."

At that moment, he would have done anything for her. Or to her. The line between the two was blurry sometimes. She was, after all, a freak, just like him.

She gasped when he touched her, lightly at first, merely grazing.

"That's a good first step," she said and carded her fingers through his hair. With her other hand, she gathered her skirt around her hips and removed her panties, almost without disturbing him. 

Her heel came down onto his shoulder again and tugged him closer. A shiver ran through her when he pressed his mouth against her sex. It was somewhat different from her frightened tremble but not quite. This was good, this association. Reassuring. Arousing, even. His mind needed these stimuli, even if his body didn't. He buried his head in her lap and licked her open. She moaned and squealed and chased his tongue with the cant of her hips.

His scalp was burning where her hands tightened on fistfuls of hair, and his back was smarting where her heel dug into it. She made it difficult for him to stay focused on the image of her earlier, whimpering and pleading.

His fingers slid inside her easily, despite the gloves. Until then he had been able to forget his own aching desire, but the thought of sinking into her and achieving completion had crept up on him, filling his mind. Harleen started twitching and shuddering then, as though she had sensed what was going through his head, and was reaching for her own climax. He withdrew his tongue. He liked to keep her there for a while, teetering on the edge, so that by the time he penetrated her she would be so focused on her own pleasure that she cared little for what he did, as long as she got what she wanted in the end.

Harleen cursed, grasped his wrist and tightened her hold on his hair, not letting him go this time. Her breath hitched and she clenched around his fingers, quivering violently. 

At last she sighed and released him. She glowed with blissful content, cheeks tinged with a flush that nearly rivaled her blouse, although the rest of her appearance was mussed. He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe his chin and mouth with, then freed her still-restrained ankle from its confines.

When he stood, she hooked her fingers into his waistband, pulling him closer.

"We gotta do something about that," she murmured and reached for his fly. He grasped her hand and twined their fingers together, pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

"I can take care of it myself," he said and hauled her up. "Let's just get you to bed."

She threw her arms around him, letting her warm body melt against his. "But I want to take care of you," she breathed into his ear. "Just give me a second."

He thought she would fall asleep instead of following through with her intentions, but before he knew what was happening, she had thrust him into the chair and was climbing into his lap. Her grin filled his vision and she kissed him again, long and hard, as she opened up his shirtfront and raked her lacquered fingernails over his skin.

"Come on, Johnny," she purred, "let him out. You've been close, right? I wanna play with him."

At the mention of _him,_ amusement sparked in his brain again and he chuckled as Harleen's hand snaked between them, tracing the contours of his erection with sure fingers. 

"Good boy," he heard her murmur as through a wall of cloth, "just let go."

He closed his eyes, placed his hands on the arm rests and let his head fall back. He breathed deep. It was different when she was no longer afraid, when she wrested control from him. It made his skin tight and uncomfortable, like his seams were about to pop.

If Harleen was still talking to him, he didn't hear, but he did feel her hands on his own, warm pressure through the membrane of his gloves. She peeled them off like that second skin they had become, shielding him from her, from _too much._ They snapped.

His eyes opened slowly, and he smiled.

"You called?"

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Prick! Goes the Scorpion's Tale", from _The Devil's Carnival._


End file.
